April 24

In Literacy, we will continue collaborating with Science on writing and illustrating our ocean animal book, "Whale Tales." We will also play a new Roll an Animal game, where we will find the matching animal halves, practicing our onset and rhyme skills.

In Math, we will continue to practice our classifying skills by first comparing and sorting different sea creatures from smallest to biggest. Then, we will place them in their corresponding fish bowls that are also sized from smallest to biggest.

In Science, we will continue to collaborate with Literacy by working on a new classroom book called “Whale Tales.” The children will draw and tell stories about whales and other sea creatures. This project allows the children to combine the facts they are learning in science and their imaginations about sea life while working on their literacy skills.

In Drama, we will begin to explore some of the sea life and characters from Leo Lionni's classic story of Swimmy. We will concentrate on the underwater movement of the supporting characters such as sea anemones, seaweed forest, the eel, and the lobster before we reenact the plot. Children will incorporate props such as scarves and streamers into movement activities.

In Art, after we have put final touches on our under-the-sea printed mural, we will begin planning and creating hanging 3-D ocean animals to help transform our winter wildlife play area into an underwater world.

In Music, we will review some of our favorite songs, and use our bodies to make little, big, and giant raindrops! To the tune of London Bridges, we will tap, clap and stomp to make the sounds of the different size raindrops. We will also start a tongue twister, and talk about why a tongue twister is so tricky!

In ASL, we will learn these new words: Spring, Flower, Bee and Butterfly

April 19

In Literacy, we will be collaborating with Science on writing and illustrating our very own Ocean Animal Book called "Whale Tales." We will also practice writing and playing games to learn onset and rime. These are the initial phonological units of any word and the letters that follow, like wh-ale and t-ale or t-ail!

In Math, after guesstimating how many children we thought it would take to measure the Blue whale (largest), Sperm whale (mid-size) and Orca (smallest), we will take the fun of measuring to the playground! We will show just exactly how big things are: 80 feet for the Blue whale, 40 feet for the Sperm whale and 20 feet for the Orca.

In Science, we will continue with our KWL (What you Know, what you Want to know, what you Learned) about whales, and start a new collaboration with Literacy. The children will begin to write and illustrate a new book about whales and ocean life. Its title? Whale Tales!

In Drama, we will continue to tell the story of The Snail and the Whale based on the book by Julia Donaldson. The children will all be on board (the whale!) to rescue it and share travel adventures. We will be asking the question, why do whales migrate and where do they go?

In Art, we have been exploring line as well as several printing processes. Through the various disciplines we will continue to learn about ocean animals. We will combine this growing interest and our new printmaking knowledge to create a large collaborative mural depicting sea life as a first step in transforming our wildlife play area into a sea world.

In ASL, we will review the words we have learned in the last few weeks.

April 3

In Literacy, we will play an egg alliteration and letter matching game. We will also make bookmarks. Whether we are traveling this spring break or staying right here in Brooklyn, we don't want to lose our place in a good book!

In Math, we will focus our interest in whales by using nonstandard units of measurement and guesstimating how many children it would take to measure the biggest to the smallest whale.

In Science, we will continue to talk about whales. We will ask the children what they want to learn about whales and compare and contrast some different species. Collaborating with math, we will use some nonstandard measuring to average the sizes of different whales.

In Drama, we will tell the story of The Snail and the Whale based on the book by Julia Donaldson. The children will all be on board (the whale!) to rescue it and share travel adventures. We will ask the question, “Why do whales migrate and where do they go?”

In Art, we have been exploring line as well as several printing processes. We will combine our growing interest in ocean animals with our new printmaking knowledge to create a large collaborative mural depicting sea life. This will be the first step in transforming our wildlife play area into a sea world.

In Music, we will use our sign language for the ocean animals in the song Slippery Fish! We will choose which animal we want to be and act it out. We will also continue singing All I Really Need by Raffi, and add hand movements!